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Simon Bamberger
The fourth governor of the state, Simon Bamberger, was Utah’s first non-Mormon and only Jewish governor.Ninety-two years ago, Simon Bamberger was elected governor of the state of Utah by more than 4,000 votes, leading what the Davis County Clipper…
Samuel Newhouse
Samuel Newhouse helped to shape Salt Lake City’s skyline through his real estate investments.Samuel Newhouse hit the ground running when he arrived in Utah in 1896. Born in New York to Russian-Jewish parents, Newhouse had been a lawyer in…
The Eagle Emporium
The Eagle Emporium remains the Salt Lake City’s “only commercial structure built prior to the completion of the transcontinental railroad.”In 1864, English immigrant William Jennings opened a mercantile business in the Eagle Emporium. The…
Marriner Eccles
The career of the Utahn who led the Federal Reserve Board through some of the darkest days of the Great Depression.With the Federal Reserve System so much in the news these days, let’s take a look at the Utahn Franklin Delano Roosevelt nominated to…
Forts Cameron and Thornburgh
Two early US Army installations in Utah were built to protect white settlers from the perceived threat of Indian attacks.In 1873, President Ulysses S. Grant formally authorized the creation of a permanent US Army garrison near Beaver named Fort…
The Box Elder Tabernacle Fire
An 1896 fire consumed the Box Elder State Tabernacle, just six years after the building had been dedicated.In 1896, LDS worshippers were just assembling for a morning meeting in the Box Elder Stake Tabernacle when the cry of “fire” rent the air.…
James Farrell
The record left behind by an Irish brickmaker living in Salt Lake City provides a unique insight into the life (and strange death) of one of Utah’s immigrants.A little more than 112 years ago, an Irish immigrant named James Farrell was found dead…
Twenty Wells
A site near present-day Grantsville provided temporary relief to the Donner party before their dangerous push across the Great Salt Lake Desert.In 1846, a series of overland parties found relief at a site on the south end of the Great Salt Lake near…
The Lucin Cutoff
The hundred-mile-long Lucin Cutoff was engineered using earth and wood to allow trains to cross the Great Salt Lake.In 1904, trains began rumbling across the Lucin Cutoff, a unique specimen of railroad engineering that except for brief contact with…
The City of Corinne
A steamboat called City of Corinne has been called the “most imposing boat that has ever sailed the Great Salt Lake”.In 1871, the Steamboat City of Corinne was launched into the wide channel of the Bear River near the settlement that shared its…
The Indian Scare That Never Was
An alliance between Mormons and Shoshone Indians put the non-Mormon residents of Corinne on edge. Concern over an alleged uprising by the alliance shook the town to its foundations.In 1875, fears of an armed uprising by Shoshone Indians swept through…
The Arsenal Hill Blast
An explosion rocked Salt Lake City in 1876, killing four people.In 1876, as Utahns were converging on Salt Lake City eager to attend the LDS Church’s general conference, a powerful blast rocked the northern part the city, shattering windows,…
Mixing the Sacred and the Secular in Beaver
The relationship between the desires of the spiritual community of Utah and the non-religious needs of the West characterize the growing Mormon frontier.In 1856, a small party of fifteen Mormon families left Parowan in Iron County intent on carving…
The Bartleson Party
The first emigrant party to cross modern-day Utah on the way to the West Coast.In 1841, a small group of emigrants set out from Sapling Grove, Missouri, to begin a new life in the Far West. Scholars still disagree about how many were actually in the…
The Old Spanish Trail
Utah’s position as a social and cultural crossroads of the west began well before European settlement. Native trading and war parties gave way to Spanish exploration throughout the territory along the Old Spanish Trail.Utah’s always been a…
Isom Dart
The mysterious murder of an African-American rancher in Daggett County.In 1900, African-American rancher Isom Dart was gunned down while walking from his cabin to his corral in Brown’s Park, a valley that straddles the borders of Utah, Colorado,…
The Bee Inspector
Salt Lake City’s bee inspector is an official position that reminds us of Salt Lake County’s very real agricultural past.Few people these days know that Salt Lake County has a bee inspector. Hiring someone to watch bees in Utah’s most urban…
Kit Hansen
A newspaper article about a robbery reveals more than the story of a crime in Salt Lake City. It also tells us about the history of racism in Salt Lake City.A little more than a century ago, a man was robbed on the streets of Salt Lake City. Hardly…
Women in Utah Politics
The early political history of Utah women began with the 1870 law that gave women the right to vote.With all of the attention on Hillary Clinton’s historic campaign for President, it might be interesting to take a look at the history of women’s…
Medical College of Utah
For two years, the small mountain community of Morgan was home to a medical college.In 1880, papers were filed incorporating the Medical College of Utah in the tiny town of Morgan. For an 80-dollar-a-term tuition bill, students would learn all the…